


If You're Gonna Fight A War

by amour_de_tous



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Trailer, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2020-01-01 07:34:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18331517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amour_de_tous/pseuds/amour_de_tous
Summary: If you're gonna fight a war, you gotta wear a uniform.Steve Rogers prepares to do everything he can to get back half the universe. Before he does, he just has to take a moment to stare at his reflection and think.





	If You're Gonna Fight A War

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently, I have a lot of emotions about the newest Endgame trailer. *shrug emoji* Have 1100 words of me losing my mind about one particular moment in the spot. Find me on tumblr at amour-de-tous.tumblr.com. Come cry with me about Endgame!

_If you’re gonna fight a war, you gotta wear a uniform._  
  
The phrase flickers through Steve’s head, over and over, as he stares at his reflection in the mirror. “Who even needs three sinks,” he mutters without feeling. It’s a habitual comment--complain about the excess of the 21st century, because that’s what’s expected of him. Except there’s no one around now that expects to hear it.  
  
They needed three sinks, once upon a time. The Avengers. Back when there were enough of them needing to suit up (or clean up) at one time that it was just...practical.  
  
The thought, now, is laughable. Half the universe. Half his team. More than half his team. Depending on which team you’re talking about, the Avengers or the Secret Avengers. When you think of the latter, he’s lost everyone but Natasha. They still don’t know where the hell Clint is, or Scott Lang. Everyone else, well.  
  
Well.  
  
_If you’re gonna fight a war, you gotta wear a uniform_.  
  
He runs his fingers through the bristles of his beard, considering his own reflection. Natasha’s hair has grown out; the ends are blonde, fading up into her red. It’s long, now. Long enough she can braid it, because enough time has passed it’s grown out, and still.  
  
Still.  
  
They’re no closer to a solution. Some people move on, right?  
  
Not him.  
  
Not them.  
  
It’s not the first time he’s lost everyone he cares about. At least this time, he’s not entirely alone. At least this time there’s Natasha, Thor, Bruce, Rhodey.  
  
He feels alone.  
  
_If you’re gonna fight a war…_  
  
But what war is he even fighting, now? His enemy is gone. His family is gone. His hope is…  
  
Strained.  
  
At best.  
  
There’s no war to fight, because there’s no fight. You can’t fight something that doesn’t exist. They’re out of ideas. If there was any chance at all, it’s got to be dwindling by the second. He’s run the scenario a millions times. What if they’d destroyed the mind stone. What if Zemo hadn’t come between them. What if Tony and Bruce hadn’t created Ultron. What if he hadn’t taken down SHIELD. What if he’d managed to shatter the Tesseract. What if he’d never been thawed. What if he hadn’t nosedived the plane. What if he hadn’t gotten on it.  
  
What if he hadn’t joined Project Rebirth.  
  
Intellectually, he knows that’s a rabbit hole he can’t go down; knows that altering any of those events could make the whole situation they’ve found themselves in worse. Somehow. Probably. Intellectually, he _knows_ that.  
  
In his heart he wonders, though.  
  
_If you’re gonna fight_ …  
  
Most days he feels like he can barely get out of bed, forget about fighting. Not a day goes by when he doesn’t mourn. There’s only supposed to be five stages of grief, so why does it feel like he’s on stage a hundred and two, and still counting? He feels old to the bone; like he’s lived every second of his 100 (almost 101. On March 10th this year, he’d cried like he hasn’t since 1943) years on Earth. Like he’s gone through his unnatural life with a millstone around his neck and a pair of iron boots on, dragging himself through each lived and unlived second with colossal effort. He’s the strongest human on the planet and he feels too weak to hold his head up. He looks down at the supplies laid out on the sink and feels the millstone drag, pulling him under again.  
  
He wonders, sometimes, how Thanos got so twisted. That’s just as dangerous a rabbit hole to go down, but he still thinks about it. How do you get so deranged you think snuffing out half the souls in the universe is acceptable? How do you live with yourself?  
  
He didn’t even snap, and he’s not sure how to live with himself.  
  
He stares into his own eyes and wonders just how many times he can lose everything before there’s nothing left of himself to lose. How many times he can be shocked awake to find the world completely changed. How many times he can watch the people he loves lost before his eyes.  
  
He doesn’t think about Bucky. Or Sam. Or Wanda. Or any of them.  
  
He does. Almost every moment of every day is filled with the throatpunch of grief for them. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees Bucky just...disintegrating. Hears _Steve?_ in his nightmares the way he used to hear a tapered off scream. Sees a pile of dust where he used to see snow.  
  
The first time--the last time--some disc jockey thought it’d be funny to play _Another One Bites The Dust_ and dedicate it to ‘half the people’, there’d been actual riots. He’d lived through rationing and censorship and a World War and goddamn Prohibition, and still, he’d never seen the entire world rise up and say _no_ the way they had after that. He hasn’t heard the song since.  
  
It still gets stuck in his head, playing on a loop to remind him just what a colossal failure he is.  
  
_If you’re gonna…_  
  
And that’s the thing, they _have_ to. They’re the Avengers--or what’s left--and they can’t just sit by and attend support groups and cry on each other’s shoulders. They’ve all lost too much--the whole world, the whole _Universe_ has lost too much--to just give up.  
  
But where do you go when home is some distant remembered entity? How do you Avenge when you can’t even think past the next morning?  
  
Somewhere out there, there’s a way to stop this. Change it. Turn back the clock. There _has_ to be. He might not be Captain America anymore, but he’s sure as hell still Steve Rogers. You always stand up. He doesn’t feel like he can do this one more minute, let alone all day, but that’s never stopped him before. Not when he was 95 pounds of wheezing pain, not when he was facing the devil, and not when he woke up to a world where everything was too bright, too loud, too much, too impersonal.  
  
It won’t stop him now.  
  
_If…_  
  
Somewhere out there, Bucky and Sam and Clint and Wanda and Vision and T’challa and Groot and Tony are waiting. He won’t believe in an unjust world where they just don’t exist. _Somewhere_ they’re waiting for him to get off his ass and move.  
  
They’re waiting for him to stand back up.  
  
_You gotta wear a uniform._  
  
Steve picks up the razor and thinks: _I’m coming._


End file.
